Gyromancy
by Frost Deejn
Summary: A prominent scientist disappears, seemingly abducted by a UFO. The Fringe team looks for answers in cases from an old FBI department informally known as the X-Files.
1. Chapter 1

Diclaimer: I don't own and disavow all profits from _Fringe _and the _X-Files_.

Author's note: The great thing about Fringe fanfiction is no matter how AU it is, it can still be considered cannon, since the show is about alternate universes to begin with, you can just say that's how it all went down in another universe. For that matter, all works of fiction can be considered crossovers with _Scenes from a Multiverse_. As for the _X-Files_, I've been missing the first five seasons lately, and offer this as an explanation for the drastic change in tone between Season 5 and Season 6.

Chapter 1

FBI Agent Olivia Dunham was the last to arrive in the conference room. Broyles, Nina Sharp, the two Bishops, and Agent Farnsworth were already waiting. She took her seat next to Peter. "So what's this new case?"

"It's about the _Magpie_," Broyles began.

"What Magpie?" Walter asked.

"The private spaceship launched in Nevada yesterday, named the _Magpie_. It's been all over the news," Astrid prompted.

"It's not really a spaceship; it's a suborbital manned space capsule," Peter corrected her. "It holds two people and launches using combined electromagnetic and rocket propulsion, perfect for space tourism on a budget. The design is brilliant, really."

"Ah, fascinating."

Broyles continued. "There's something the news hasn't been reporting. The engineer who designed the _Magpie_, Dr. Wang Qiming, disappeared shortly after the launch."

"Since they called us in I take it this doesn't look like the weekend-in-Vegas kind of disappeared," said Peter.

"Unfortunately not. He disappeared while he and the rest of the launch team were retrieving the capsule after the landing. Taylor Anderson understandably wanted to keep the situation out of the news until his engineer's whereabouts can be determined."

"To avoid scaring off investors," Peter remarked.

"Or to prevent attempts by unscrupulous parties to find him first," Nina said, speaking up for the first time in the meeting. "Dr. Wang is brilliant, and he has top security clearance for his work on some highly classified projects."

"For what country?" Olivia inquired.

"Massive Dynamic."

"Oh," Peter nodded.

"So what exactly happened?" Astrid asked. "He was with a group of people. Someone must have seen something."

"The _Magpie's_ test pilot," Broyles said, "LaJana Conroy, claims there was a ball of light that followed the capsule as it reentered the atmosphere. She lost sight of the object when the parachute deployed, but saw it approach the landing site before moving east, toward where Dr. Wang's ATV was discovered abandoned less than a kilometer away. Other than those of the searchers, there were no tracks leading to or away from Dr. Wang's ATV."

"So let me get this straight: are we seriously considering the idea that an engineer was abducted by aliens?" Peter asked.

"We've seen stranger things," Astrid said.

"Have we? Have you ever considered the _literally_ astronomical distances that separate our solar system from anywhere else in the universe that could possibly support life? Even traveling at the speed of light it would take years to get from the nearest star to Earth. And if a civilization capable of traveling at the speed of light is coming to our little planet and doing secret tests on people, I want to meet them to ask them why they bothered."

"It would not be our prerogative to assume we could divine anything about the motives of such intelligences," Walter opined.

"You may have a point, but how do you explain that no investigation into UFO or alien sightings have ever turned up any solid evidence?"

"I don't know," Astrid said. "Have you read a book by José Chung called _From Outer Space_?"

"The supposedly non-fiction science fiction about two FBI agents investigating an alien abduction? Yeah, I've read it. Saying the names and details were changed to protect the privacy of the people involved was an especially nice touch," Peter replied.

"Ah, so you haven't told them," Nina said, giving Broyles a look.

Olivia glanced at her and then Broyles. "Told us what?"

Broyles cleared his throat. "That book is based on an actual investigation. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Before there was a Fringe Division, even before there was a Department of Homeland Security, the FBI had a small department devoted to reviewing cases that had been dismissed as unsolvable, informally known as the X-files, and investigating reports of paranormal occurrences all over the country. The agents assigned to it were a medical doctor named Agent Dana Scully, and a criminal profiler named Agent Fox Mulder. Most of the cases they investigated proved to be hoaxes, mis-identifications, or otherwise explicable, but they did investigate several events that were not so easily dismissed, including several early Pattern events, although they weren't recognized as such at the time. They also concluded there was substance to several of the UFO reports they investigated, though the evidence they were able to produce was...equivocal."

"What happened to it?" Olivia asked.

"The project was plagued with political resistance from the start. It was shut down in 1998, and the office where the X-files were kept was the victim of a quite likely intentional fire."

"And I take it there weren't digital backups of those files?" Peter asked gloomily.

"For the older cases, no. It was a simpler time."

"Then can we bring in Agents Scully and Mulder?" Olivia inquired. "If this case does involve some kind of UFO they may have some insight."

"Agent Mulder has been in a hospital, in a coma, since October 13th, 1998, the same night Agent Scully disappeared."

"A coma? Due to what?" Walter asked.

"A gunshot to the head. He was found in the street near his apartment. The shooter was never found. And since Agent Scully hasn't been seen since, she is considered a suspect. Word is, they didn't always see eye to eye."

"Long way from not seeing eye to eye to shooting your partner," Astrid noted.

"Not according to some of the other agents who have had the pleasure of working with Fox Mulder," Broyles said. "At any rate, we do have the reports Agents Scully and Mulder made for their own investigations, which may prove valuable in finding Dr. Wang. It's a shame that they aren't around to help, as this case would be right up their alley."

"So this Fox fellow has been in a coma for fifteen years?" asked Walter.

"Yes, unfortunately."

"Fantastic. Let's wake him up, shall we?


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"EEG scans indicate his brain is still functioning, though he doesn't seem to be responsive to any outside stimuli," explained Dr. Nancy Gonzalez, a neurologist at the hospital where Fox Mulder had spent most of the past 15 years. Walter, Peter, and Astrid followed her as she walked down the hallway. "We had high hopes for his recovery, in the beginning."

"What's his PCI?" asked Walter.

"It varies between 0.2 and 0.5," she replied. "Other than his boss, and for the first couple of years this odd group of three guys, no one has been to visit him. No family. It's sad."

Walter looked down at the patient thoughtfully, then forced open his eyelids and examined his pupils. Dr. Gonzalez looked a little irritated, but more resigned than anything else.

"May I ask, do you have his PET scan results handy?"

She took his medical file from its slot at the foot of the bed, thumbed through it to the requested pages, and handed it to Walter.

"Ah, excellent." He looked through a few pages with interest. "He is an ideal specimen for our study. We will have him transferred to our clinic.

Dr. Gonzalez nodded. She felt uneasy about the arrangement, but their authorization papers were in order, and honestly it would almost be a relief to have a patient they could do nothing else for off their hands so her team could focus on those patients—mostly injured vets—who could benefit from the hospital's resources.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Fox Mulder was lying on the table in Walter's lab. Walter was reading over the patient's medical reports while Astrid read over the reports from Agent Mulder's cases. When Olivia entered the room, it was silent except for the shuffle of paper and the beeping of the monitors connected to the comatose man.

She looked down at Mulder for a moment, then said, "It's tragic. I remember hearing about him at Quantico. He did some groundbreaking work in profiling psychoses in unsubs."

"Maybe we shouldn't wake him up after all," Peter joked as he entered behind her. "He'd have a field day profiling this lab."

Astrid glanced up from her reading, looking to Walter. "Do you think you can do it? Can we wake him up?"

"Yes, I think we can. Some major connections in his brain have been broken, but I believe a combination of stem cells and cortexiphan may be able to regrow them. His body has been kept in working order by the ministrations of physical therapy by hospital staff, so once we get him up he should be able to walk. Of course, I'll have to cut it open to make sure it reaches the correct regions."

"Cut it open?" Astrid repeated, sounding as if she were sorry for asking even as she spoke the words.

"His brain."

"I'll get the iodine," she sighed.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Something was wrong suddenly. He couldn't put his finger on what, but something had changed. Something in the color of the sunlight and the lake suddenly seemed...off.

Without warning his head began to pound. It wasn't just pain; he could feel his heartbeat in his head.

And then his eyes opened. He didn't remember closing them, but they opened. They opened stiffly, like they were gummy from sleep. He'd been sitting up a moment ago, and now he was lying down. It was dim here, where he'd just been in bright sunlight.

There were people here. He heard them in the dark.

"Where am I?"

His voice was weak, creaky. He felt weak all over.

"He's awake!"

Someone came into his line of sight, standing over him. He squinted to see in the dim light, and could make out a beautiful young African American woman. She was the one who'd spoken. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

There were two other people behind her, a man and a woman.

"Who are you?" Mulder croaked.

A second man pushed his way to the side of the bed. He was older, squat and withered, but with an impression of manic energy. "Do you know who you are?"

That answer could be dangerous, Mulder reminded himself. "I asked you first."

The blond woman sidled past the older man. She was pregnant, just beginning to show. "I'm FBI Agent Olivia Dunham. These are my colleagues Agent Astrid Farnsworth, Doctor Walter Bishop, and Peter Bishop. I'm sure this must be a little disorienting..."

"How did I get here?"

And why did he feel so weak?

"Do you remember your name?" the woman who'd identified herself as Agent Dunham asked.

"Can I see your badge?"

She showed him her badge, which he squinted at. It was blurry, and hard to make out in the weak light.

"Mulder," he said. "Fox Mulder."

"Do you know what year it is?" Dr. Bishop asked. He sounded like he legitimately wanted to know what year it was.

"2013."

"Fascinating."

That one word chilled him to the bone. "Why? What year is it?"

"2013. You're quite correct. Which is fascinating. Your brain has done a fabulous job of keeping track. That's zeitgeber for you."

"Where's Scully?" he asked uneasily, urgently.

The two FBI agents exchanged glances.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Agent Dunham inquired.

"I was on a boat on a lake in Italy...with Scully. Where is she?"

"When was that?"

"Just barely." He tried to sit up, but was suddenly overcome with dizziness and weakness and fell back into the bed.

"Orthostatic hypotension," Dr. Bishop pronounced. "Please don't try to move too suddenly."

"What happened? Where's Scully?"

"Agent Mulder," Dunham said soothingly, "please try to remain calm. You've been in a coma for the past fifteen years. You're currently recovering from brain surgery."

He reached up and touched a bandage taped to his head. The dull sensation he felt there confirmed his suspicion that he was on pain meds. He shook his head. "You're lying! This is a trick. Where's Scully? Scully!"

"Please don't shout; you could give yourself a brain aneurysm."

The short burst of panicked energy suddenly abandoned Mulder. His head sank into the pillow and he closed his eyes. "Where's Scully?" he repeated, his raspy voice almost a whimper.

"She disappeared the same night you got the bullet to the head that put you in a coma," said Peter. "Do you remember that? The X-Files had been shut down, you'd been investigating the bomb threat that was called in before the Dallas Federal Building bombing and you were put on administrative leave. Then you were found in the street outside your apartment with a bullet in your brain."

"I remember. Scully was stung by a bee. It infected her with the alien virus. She was abducted, taken to an alien spaceship in Antarctica. But I saved her."

"He's delirious," Astrid said.

"No, he's interpreting the electrical firings of his synaptic cells in response to the trauma caused by the bullet," Walter said.

"But the X-Files were reopened. I went to the Bermuda Triangle and went back in time to a Nazi ship. We found out about the supersoldiers, and I found out the Smoking Man was my father. And the batboy. And there was a genie who gave me three wishes. My first wish was for world peace and she made everyone else in the world disappear. Then everyone thought I was dead, except Scully."

"I think the word for that is 'delirious'," Peter stated.

"And Scully was pregnant," Mulder continued. Fatigue was gaining on him, and his words were quiet and slurred. "We had a son. She named him William. Both of our fathers were named William."

Peter glanced involuntarily at Olivia.

"How interesting. I believe when his brain was cut off from outside stimuli, it compensated by creating an elaborate explanatory narrative," Walter said.

"I believe we should let him alone for a while," Astrid said barely above a whisper.

Mulder had grown silent, and his eyes were closed. He was either quietly mulling the reality he'd just woken up to, or asleep.

Olivia and Peter walked out of the room ahead of Walter, who was practically shooed out by Astrid, who stayed behind to check Agent Mulder's vitals.

"I'm not sure how much help he's going to be," Peter confided.

"Sometimes the question to ask is how much help you will be."

Peter frowned, wondering what exactly his father meant by that statement.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

When he woke up next, the room was empty, with sunlight reflecting down through a narrow window. Soft music was playing, it sounded like classical music from a vinyl record. He stared at the window, stared at the room.

The bandage was still around his head. There was more pain now, so the meds were wearing off. This was real, he couldn't bring himself to deny it.

He heard the door open, and managed to turn his head just enough to recognize the younger woman—Agent Farnsworth—before the pain made him relax his neck again.

"What is this place?" he asked without looking at her.

"An old lab in a Harvard basement. Long story," she replied.

"What they were telling me...it's true, isn't it?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to say that it is."

"Can I have a mirror?"

Astrid hesitated for a moment, then angled up a dentist's mirror Walter sometimes used during his experiments.

Mulder stared at his reflection. He didn't recognize the person he saw: his hair was gray, his complexion sallow, and his face wrinkled, the skin loose. He looked like his father—the man he'd believed was his father before he'd learned the truth about the Smoking Man... No, what he'd thought had been the truth. Had he really imagined it? The question of his parentage had been on his mind since he'd learned his mother may have had an affair with the Smoking Man, but now the truth was staring him in the face, or staring out from his face: he was the son and spitting image of William Mulder. He might have felt relieved under other circumstances.

If Scully were there.

He reached up slowly and touched his cheek, feeling his hand to confirm it was a mirror and not some sort of illusion.

But it had all seemed so real.

"Has it really been fifteen years?"

"I'm so sorry."

In spite of the pain in his head, he looked away as tears welled in his eyes.

Astrid pretended not to notice. "You must be hungry. Even if you don't feel hungry, you need to eat something. I'll make some chicken soup. Unless you're a vegetarian?"

Mulder chuckled. "I must be hungry," he said. "I haven't eaten solid food in fifteen years. No, I'm not a vegetarian. Chicken soup..." He bit his lip, and couldn't finish.

Astrid didn't press him, but turned her attention to the task of heating up some soup over a Bunson burner.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When Olivia and Peter returned to the lab, alerted by a text from Astrid that the patient was awake and calmer, they found Agent Mulder sitting at a table slowly eating a bowl of soup. He was wearing a teeshirt and loose slacks, doubtless some outfit Astrid had prudently procured beforehand.

"How are you feeling?" Olivia asked gently.

"Considering I was shot in the head and in a coma for fifteen years, fine," Mulder said.

"I'm so sorry this happened to you."

Peter considered apologizing for waking him up. If the last thing he remembered from the world he'd created for himself was boating in Italy, it sounded like a better break than the reality they'd woken him up to.

"So you're ready to believe this is the real world?" he asked instead.

Mulder glanced up at him, then away, like he was looking at something else. "I don't want to believe," he said, and a ghost of a smile crossed the left corner of his lips for a second. "But the more I think about it...In the past fifteen years, things happened...I saw things, knew things, that I couldn't have seen and couldn't have known about. It just...it just all seemed so real to me."

Astrid raised her eyebrows as she poured a cup of tea. "The genie seemed so real to you?"

And then Mulder did smile. He laughed. It was too dry and weak to call the laughter hysterical, and it only lasted for a few seconds before sputtering away. "Yeah." After a moment, he looked up at Peter. "Where's...Bishop. Dr. Walter Bishop...wait...Peter Bishop...Harvard...basement." He frowned as these names plucked at an old memory, something he'd read. Something he'd read in an X-File.

"My father is at home, making cotton candy. He's a little eccentric, but he did manage to wake you from a coma when teams of surgeons and neurologists couldn't, so there is that."

"He's your father."

"Yes, he's my father."

Peter and Olivia glanced at each other as he spoke. Mulder noticed the look. His eyes flicked from Peter's face to Olivia's, then to Olivia's stomach, then back to Peter's face. He lifted a spoonful of soup. "And you work together?"

"Yeah. Long story, and I don't think it's one that would particularly interest you just now."

Mulder looked down and concentrated on eating for a few minutes. "What do we know about Scully's disappearance?"

Olivia answered. "Not much, I'm afraid. Just that she disappeared the same night you were shot. Some of your neighbors remembered seeing her in your apartment building. She's classified as a person of interest in your shooting."

"I can see that," he joked. "It wouldn't be the first time she'd wanted to kill me." But then he clenched his eyes shut in sudden pain. Astrid put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I never really told her," Mulder said tightly, "how I felt about her."

"She knew," Astrid said. "Women always know."

Olivia gave her a confused frown and half shake of her head, and Astrid returned a quick gesture to play along.

Mulder put his hand over Astrid's for just a second, then he sighed and leaned forward, shrugging her off, and stared into what was left of his soup.

He looked like a man whose whole life had suddenly been ripped out from under him. Peter knew that feeling well. He thought about what his father had said.

"Agent Mulder, do you feel like going for a walk?" he asked.

"As far as I know, I haven't really been outside in fifteen years. It would be good to stretch my legs."


End file.
